Too bad, I thought, lowering the blinds in my bedroom. ThenI switched off the nightlight and fell into bed, my curiosity aroused: one day I would count the number of items in her collection. Did she also keep strings?
You're on the right path, whispered the voice into my left ear.
Well, I don't know about that, whispered the voice into my right ear. I'mnot having any more of this, I murmured, drifting off to sleep.
I was dreaming of a field of eggplants, he said, when the ringing of the phone woke me up. "Good morning, my mother …"
"Well well, you're not whispering anymore."
"The cat ran away …"
"What a pity."
"Yes, it's a pity …"
"And you're not up yet."
"I went to bed late …"
"Late, late, that's all you ever say."
"It's Sunday, my mother …"
"I will not hang up until I've had a chance to speak my mind."
"Yes, my mother …"
"Now that you're living in Paris like a parish priest, no one ever sees you. What will our neighbors think? Do you know I amcounting the days? Do you realize you left in July?"
"July of which year, my mother?"
"What do you mean, which year? You're making fun of me now, Mohamed son of el-Mokhtar!" she barked, in Arabic. "Forgive me, my mother. I was still in my dream."
"Well, you'd better wake up from that dream of yours. Your sister, unlike some, comes to eat my couscous every Sunday, and her husband says his prayers."
"I know, my mother."
"If I'm telling you again, it's for your own good, so that you'll start again. Your brother-in-law isn't even a Muslim, and he—"
"He is, now."
"But his parents aren't. They're not even Christian. They're nothing at all, atheists up to their eyebrows. God protect us, and he didn't know the first thing about Islam. Not only does he continue to go to the mosque, but he attends the Halaqa with pleasure, he doesn't miss a single lesson, he chants the moutaawidhates in Arabic, and all in one go, and his face radiates the light of Paradise, and soon he'll recite the Sura alBaqara like a master. Your grandfather would have been proud of him, believe me."
"I believe you, my mother."
"If that son of roumis has joined our fine religion, it is thanks to that master. Without the religion he gave first to me, then to you, and which I continued to hand on to you as best I could, your sister would have just gone her own sweet way in this debauched country. She would have been like all those girls who go off with infidels and have no fear of the wrath of Allah."
"Yes, my mother."
"She would have been just like her sister who's rotting in Blida, or the other one, that wretch who called her son Pierre. Did you know, by the way, that his name is Pierre?"
"No, my mother."
"I found out through the neighbor's daughter, the one who was with her at the lycée, actually, but she made a good marriage, she did, and is raising her children to keep to the straight and narrow."
"Yes, my mother."
"Can you imagine the shame that this will bring upon us? If she hadn't been born here, we would have taken her by force to Blida. But she'll pay for it. On earth and before Allah."
"Yes, my mother."
"I've heard that you see her."
"See who, my mother?"
"The non-believer."
"No, my mother."
"That's what else my neighbor's daughter told me. She saw you together, she said, in Paris."
"She was mistaken, my mother."
"And to think you are the only one of my children who had a real religious education. So did it all go for nothing? Am I going to roast in hell because of you?"
"Don't worry, my mother, I am neither a non-believer nor an apostate. And I never will be." After a sigh of relief, my mother said, "We're waiting for you, apple of my eye. Your brother and your brother-in-law are going to the mosque. I've washed and ironed your clothes. You'll join them, won't you?"
"Yes, my mother …"
"And I have a surprise for you, apple of my eye."
"What sort of surprise, my mother?" I sighed. "Nothing you could ever imagine. In any case, it's not a fiancée. You'll see, my son …" I crawled out of bed and went into the living room. I swallowed a shot of whisky, to help me get back to sleep that much more easily, and I went back into the bedroom. After I'd unplugged the landline and switched off the cell phone, I burrowed under the comforter.
When I woke up, it was past two o'clock in the afternoon. My brother and my brother-in-law must have been at the mosque. And your mother must be cursing you, hissed the voice into my right ear. Shit, I swore. After my shower I drank a coffee and settled at my desk. I opened the computer and went through the notes I'd made, higgledy-piggledy, for my book. I also noticed that every Monday I had chronicled every one of my single-man Sundays, along with all the evenings I'd spent over the course of these last three months with the fresh young thing who no longer returned my calls and who had not switched her answering machine back on. I opened a file, determined to write to her. It was time for an explanation. We'd gotten off to a really good start, the two of us. Yes or no? Did she not have my spare set of keys? Who did she think she was, anyway? The slave Roxalane?1I was not some sort of dog. I was a sultan, in actual fact. Then I remembered that she had never given me her exact address. And the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs was endless. I called information to no avail. Her number was unlisted. I deleted the letter and sat for a long time looking at the plane tree growing in the courtyard. Persist, hissed the voice in my right ear. He does have other things to do, whispered the voice in my left ear. Patrol the sidewalk up and down the rue Notre-Dame-desChamps.
Keep a watch out for her in all the nearby shops. Outside her school, in the libraries of Paris. Be a man, a real one, hissed the voice in my right ear. And what if I really was going crazy? I switched off the computer with the firm intention of speaking to my psychiatrist about these voices. Besides, I hardly had any Stilnox left. I went round in circles and called the boxer-shorts collector. She didn't feel like going out, and she was getting ready for her trip, she moaned. Then she reminded me of her birthday party. I mustn't forget, she'd be delighted, little houri. Etcetera. "You know the way, now," she said. "You can call me when you get here so I can tell you the code. See you soon, Mohamed." Satisfied with my initial sexual performance, proud of this upcoming date, I wrote down in my diary that I must urgently buy a pair of boxer shorts, the finest ones in Paris, and they would be my present … And to hell with the daddy's girl who never answered my calls, and who kept my keys. She had never entrusted me with her own keys, or even let me visit her apartment, and she'd gone so far as to refuse my help when she was moving in. I opened my cell phone. I typed, Please return keys. Mohamed, and hit "send." A moment later, Message received flashed on the screen.
1The second wife of Suleiman the Magnificent, the first Russian slave in history to be married to a sultan (Mohamed).
The following Sunday, he said, when I closed the door to my apartment, the reminder note where I'd written lunch at mother's caught my gaze.
Then I thought about Nadia or Samia. I can't remember which. How could I remember a name that I could hardly hear when we'd been introduced? I myself must not have said it a single time.
What I do remember is that she was as blonde as a field of wheat. Rather ripe, the wheat. But what does it matter. Had she not kept my cock down her throat? For an entire hour. With an eye on the clock. It happened in my car, and I'd have to clean the backseat without delay, before it started smelling of sour milk, I thought, picking up the cigarette lighter from the table by the entrance.
One hour, I thought, lighting up a cigarette and heading for thekitchen. My ex, that virgin who blushed down to her pussy if I walked through the apartment naked, that girl who never returned my calls, who unplugged her answering machine and kept my keys—which is why I hadn't invited the woman with the bleached hair to my place
—the two or three times she'd actually tried hadn't lasted more than three seconds. And our affair hadn't lasted three months.
How can you qualify her as an ex? whispered the voice in my left ear. Before spelling it out: An "ex" is someone with whom you have copulated your fill. An "ex" is someone who has emptied you out according to the rules. An "ex" is someone who used to hang around in the apartment if not naked at least in the extravagant negligee that was a token of your generosity. An "ex" is someone who gave herself to you indefatigably, without keeping tabs. An "ex" is someone very different from that chick who disappeared without a warning. That's true, all very true, I grumbled, staggering to the kitchen. I placed a cup under the spout of the machine and pressed the button. The green light started to flash. As soon as it stopped flashing, I put in the capsule and pressed the button, which again began to flash. I watched the liquid dripping into the cup and I told myself that I was lucky to have good coffee to drink, that I would gladly offer one to the blonde from earlier on, the one who had made use of her mouth, her tongue, and her throat, I recalled with delight while staring at the foam thickening in the cup. But the same woman explained to me that her husband would for sure detect any smell of sex on her, and she had refused to let me penetrate her. That creature whom you will not introduce to your mother, hissed the voice in my right ear. Not on your life, I replied, swallowing the hot coffee.
Forty years old. A perv. A married perv. At which point I played back the calls flashing on the machine. Five, and all from my mother, which I immediately erased.I swallowed a Stilnox, picked up my cell phone, in case the virgin Khadija-Samira-Roxalane happened to call, and headed for the bedroom. Before getting undressed, I hunted through the pockets of my jeans to find the contact info for the blonde with the black roots—I'd met her at a gallery opening that Driss had dragged me to, assuring me that I would not go home alone, and let that little student go fly a kite, he sniggered. That pious little hypocrite, looking for a husband, he scoffed. "I know her sort only too well, girls who come here from their village, supposedly to study," he said. "They play the emancipated type and all that, but the minute they find a guy like us, they get their hooks in, and presto!"
"I don't think she's like that," I protested. "All she cares about is her studies …"
"You think she would have spent entire weekends at your place if all she cared about was her studies? Or that she would have offered you an ashtray from Conran if you were a supermarket stock boy? Or if you were living at your mother's? Or if you had kept your suburban accent? She would not even have looked at you, buddy! Where did you meet her, anyway? Huh? Saint-Germain? At the Flore, right? That's where they go hunting for guys like us. Can you picture her hanging out in some place like the Café des Amis in Ménilmontant? You say she never said a word about marriage. That's just tactics, cousin, they are as sly as foxes, those little cuties. She might even make you believe she's a virgin up to her eyebrows. And the day before the wedding, she'll spread her legs for the best hymen restorer in Paris. I've been around them, you know, those petty bourgeois chicks from Algiers, and I nearly fell into the trap. Your little white goose wants only one thing, for you to go up to her nabob of a daddy with a ring and some splendid prospects for his darling daughter. I don't know if she told you, but her father is the biggest importer of beer and baby milk in the country. Before that, he was a bigwig in government, known as the white wolf in Algiers, even here. Le Canard Enchaîné published an article about him."
"You're mistaken all around," I said. "Her father was a simple fisherman. And the man she looks to as her father is a playwright. Her sister-in-law told me."
"Whether he's her father or not doesn't change a thing regarding her intentions—her sole interest is your bohemian immigrant life. I had a good look at her at the Flore, you know; with her little well-brought-up airs and graces, she wouldn't even look at me, as though I was the resident scumbag. I'll bet she tried, all casual like, to remind you of the values from the home country, I'll bet she was cooking up couscous and chorba for you, and breezing into your place with makrouts and baklava from La Bague de Kenza, I'll bet she even ironed your clothes and tidied up your kitchen so that you could sit there all cozy watching Stade 2. They'll do that even if they don't live with you. And she would never live with you without a marriage certificate. Besides, those girls set themselves a deadline. If, at the end of three months, there is no sign that they're headed for marriage, they vanish. As if you'd never laid eyes on them."
Other than the fact that she wasn't the daughter of a big wig, Driss was speaking the truth. She would stand there indignantly examining the packets of pure pork ham decorating my fridge, and ask about my ethno-culinary tastes, then cook me up lamb tajines and chorbas and grilled-pepper salads. But she also ironed my shirts, and advised me to wear this or that tie, and she brushed my suits. And it was with a gleam in her eye that she loved to hear me talk about my work at the bank, about the contracts I was signing with major multinational corporations, about my knowledge of the stock market …
Whether she was aiming for marriage or not, she was barely twenty-five years old, she was a virgin, she was cute, she came from a good family, she was a future astrophysicist, she spoke Arabic and observed Ramadan—so I have to admit she did suit me, or at any rate she would have suited my mother, who would have given her a ceremonial welcome …
But the whole business didn't even last three months, retorted the other voice. And you don't even know the color of her nipples. And your cousin is right. As we speak, you sit here moping, while the firefly is surely off bantering with a boy her age. Maybe even a real born-and-bred Frenchman, with a foreskin thrown in.
Enough, I cried, and from the back pocket of my pants I pulled the contact info for the woman with the oh-so-welcoming throat. I left the paper out in plain sight on my night table and I could feel my cock swelling.
I picked up the pink pajamas, which I now kept hidden under the right-hand pillowcase—the concierge probably couldn't figure out what was going on; when she came every Friday to clean my apartment she would put the pajamas back in place, though she'd never even caught a glimpse of their owner, or any other woman for that matter, and she had stuck Mohamed Ben Mokhtar on my letter box, and, logical conclusion, must have thought "Mohamed Ben Mokhtar" was my secret lover—and I thought of nothing but the round and firm and quivering breasts …
No sooner was I in my dream, he said, than the ringing of the phone woke me up. "Yes, my mother …"
Cut the conversation short. Hang up. Disconnect. Go back to sleep. "I hope we'll see you today, you haven't forgotten, you won't forget to come and eat at home …" No, I wouldn't forget, I had even written it down in capital letters on a sticky note by the door. I had written it down because my sister, the pious one of course, had informed me that last Sunday my mother had cried all through the meal. She was losing weight before my sister's very eyes. The fact that I never turned up didn't help matters—she was pitiful to look at, and she interrupted the meal to say, "Only your brother is missing, the apple of my eye, who lives like a priest in Paris. And he must be wallowing in filth and buried in dust …" And so on, went my sister, holding back her own tears. "No, I haven't forgotten, my mother. I'll be at the house before noon …"
"But it is noon!" shouted my mother. "We're here together to break the fast. Have you forgotten Ramadan? Have you forgotten that today, October 9, is the fifth day?"
"Already?" I said, biting my lip. "What do you mean, already?"
"The ninth of October …"
"Your brother-in-law, Ali, may God protect him, has already begun to organize our trip to Mecca, my son. The Paris mosque has a very good package on offer. An entire month, room and board and transportation. A week in Medina, and three in Mecca. It won't be cheap …"
"You can tell me about it when I get to Saint-Ouen."
"Get here just a bit before it's time to break fast, so we can talk calmly. Thanks to your car, your brother is already back from the
market." Clean the backseat of my new car. Before it starts to stink. Before going to Saint-Ouen. When they take a look at it, my mother, my brother, my sister and her pervert husband might recognize the smell of semen. "I have to wash my car," I said automatically. "You can do it here, my son, your brother will help you …"
"I have to hang up, my mother, so I can get ready …"
"You do that, my son. We're expecting you. I'm waiting impatiently, apple of my eye. And, in addition, your brother's fiancée and her parents will be there. After we break fast, we'll all go to the mosque on rue Jean-Pierre-Timbaud, for the tarawih prayer. You'll join us, won't you?"
"Yes, my mother …"
"And if you have someone, my son, don't hesitate to invite her …"
"I have no one, my mother. Not yet …"
"That girl you told your sister about. Isn't she Algerian?"
"Yes, my mother. But she's thirty-four."
"Your sister said she was a student in astrophysics, preparing a dissertation on the planet Venus or something like that."
"That's right, but she's old, my mother."
"The mayor's daughter is still waiting for you, my son … Your brother's fiancée's parents will eventually get tired of waiting …"
"So let him get married, my mother …"
"Not on your life! What would people think? That my eldest son has something wrong with him!"
"People have more important things to worry about, and I'm worn out, my mother …"
"You are bewitched, my son. Last week, I wanted you to meet a good Moroccan woman who came all the way from Carcassonne just to remove the spell. That was my surprise, my son. Alas, if the disenchantment is to work, we have to wait until the end of Ramadan. She promised she'd come back and take care of you as if you were her own son. You'll do what she says, won't you, my son?"
"Yes, my mother …"
"I'm sure it's that thirty-four-year-old woman who's bewitched you, my poor boy. I always told you, as they get older they turn into perverts …"
"Yes, my mother."
The Sexual Life of an Islamist in Paris Page 12
